Engineering project management
Undergraduate · Engineering
Syllabus focus
Topics typically covered
Standard syllabus
Initiation and planning
- Project life cycle and phase gates for engineered products
- Stakeholder identification, analysis, and communication needs
- Project charter, problem statement, and success metrics
- Scope statement and requirements traceability (intro)
- Work breakdown structure (WBS) to deliverable packages
- Network diagrams, critical path, and float
- Gantt schedules and resource leveling
- Cost estimating: analogous, parametric, and bottom-up
- Budget baselines and contingency reserves
- Risk register: identify, score, and plan responses
- Quality planning, acceptance criteria, and verification vs validation
- Procurement planning and make-vs-buy decisions
Execution, monitoring, and control
- Team structures: functional, matrix, and projectized
- RACI charts and decision rights
- Status reporting, dashboards, and meeting cadence
- Change control boards and configuration management (intro)
- Earned value: PV, EV, AC, CPI, SPI, EAC
- Issue logs, escalation paths, and blocker removal
- Vendor management, SOWs, and contract types (FP, T&M, cost-plus survey)
- Safety, regulatory, and ethics obligations during execution
- Agile, hybrid, and waterfall choices for engineering work
- Kanban/scrum artifacts adapted to hardware–software teams
Closure and continuous improvement
- Formal acceptance and handoff packages
- As-built documentation and lessons learned
- Warranty, support, and operations transition
- Post-project audits and retrospectives
- Knowledge management for reuse
- Portfolio and program context (survey)
- Capstone: plan a sample engineering project with WBS + risk + schedule
- Capstone: earned-value scenario analysis from given data
- Capstone: stakeholder communication plan for a design change
- Capstone: ethics case response for schedule-vs-safety pressure
Notes
Aligns with PMBOK-informed engineering PM courses; PMP/CAPM prep depth varies by offering. Tutoring uses the course’s templates (charter, WBS, risk register).